Design Week Lecture

"The Space of Trees"

Gary Hilderbrand, FASLA
Principal, Reed Hilderbrand

Tuesday, January 16th
7:00 p.m.
Trayes Hall, Douglass Campus Center

The Department of Landscape Architecture is pleased to begin its Spring 2007 Speakers Series with a special lecture for the 2nd annual "Design Week" charrette by Gary Hilderbrand. The focus of the talk will be the use of plants to create memorable spaces and meaningful places
and will draw upon some of the award winning work of his firm, Reed Hilderbrand.

Reed Hilderbrand embodies the belief that landscape is a compelling medium of cultural expression. Their ASLA award winning projects range from private residences to the Hobart Urban Nature Preserve to the Children's Therapeutic Garden at the Institute for Child and Adolescent Development. And as evidenced by their work at seminal American landscapes such as the Arnold Arboretum and the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the firm has developed a reputation for creating designs that capable of bridging the past and the future. As a design critic, Mr. Hilderbrand's books and articles have examined critical dimensions of twentieth century landscape architecture, ranging from the traditionalist approach of Richard Webel and Umberto Innocenti to the early Modernism of Dan Kiley to the ecological responsiveness of Richard Haag to the contemporary efforts of George Hargreaves. In all cases, his writings reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of professional practice: how responding to the needs of society instills an awareness of the site, and how the process of shaping earth, plants, and water give rise to expressive possibilities. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Landscape Architects and of the American Academy in Rome.

"Design Week" was initiated into the curriculum last year to allow students in the professionally accredited program in Landscape Architecture to test their own abilities in solving complex spatial problems. In the first week of the spring semester departmental courses are replaced by a single intensive design exercise. Integrated teams of sophomores, juniors, and seniors are presented with a seemingly intractable problem that involves a multifaceted program, a large site, technical challenges, a rich cultural context, and ever-present concerns about natural system. They are then given six days to provide a solution. While members of the faculty are available for consultation, students are, themselves, largely responsible for all aspects of the undertaking: defining the precise scope of work, scheduling tasks, identifying research and analysis needs, prescribing a design-development process, procuring drawing and model making supplies, and producing a book of their work. Final drawings and models are then publicly presented and critiqued by an outside jury. For sophomores, who have just been admitted to the program, Design Week is an opportunity to apply the skills recently learned and see firsthand the kinds of knowledge they will develop in the coming years. For upperclassmen it is the chance to develop logistical and leadership skills. For all, it is the opportunity to develop a teamwork ethic. But perhaps above all, the scope and scale of these projects combined with the intensity in which they are studied provides the students with a unique opportunity for independent work. Last year's problem was to complete the College Avenue Design Competition RFP--something the professional firms had five months to do. This year's problem will be revealed to the students on the morning of the 16th.